


Ninth Doctor Drabbles

by orange_crushed



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:32:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He turns halfway and his profile is long, lean, like a shadow. Maybe that changes, too. "You could mention it travels in time."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ninth Doctor Drabbles

**  
The Harriet Jones Effect.   
**

"This is Rose Tyler," he says, flashing teeth and the psychic paper in one go, because really, it's a combination deal. "She's my plus one." They snap open the velvet ropes. "This is Rose Tyler," he says, a week later, at a crime scene. "She's my plus one." Yellow tape is pulled aside for her to pass under. "This is Rose Tyler," he tells the Russian Ballet, in April of 2017. "She's my plus one." They nod and bustle her backstage. "This is Ro-"

"Yes, we know," says the viceroy of Parabrazilicon. "We're all familiar with your plus one, thank you."

Rose laughs and snaps her gum.

"It's alright, Doctor," she says, slipping her arm through his. "You can be my plus one for a bit."

 **  
**  
Ripe.   
**   
**

She is holding an apple; the color spreads from her hands, the round red tips of her fingers, the orange glow of her wrists in the console light, smooth yellow-white skin soft at the insides of her elbows. She is holding an apple and she is connected, all of it is. The round green earth and the circles of her kneecaps, the apple and the seeds and the dark centers of her eyes and she bites down, hard, and the flesh of the fruit splits.

His pulse jumps like a subwoofer, the sudden spurt of time on a broken clock. He flushes the color of cherries, or doesn't, because she can't see him anyway, not under the grates. He strips a wire more brutally than anybody has to.

"What ?" she asks. The juice runs down her chin. She licks the trails with a pink tongue. He rolls his eyes to keep from opening his mouth, because nothing good will come of that.

"D'you know," he says idly, after a long minute spent trying to mentally deconstruct her nutritious breakfast, "on some planets you'd have to eat that with a knife and fork." She frowns. "With gloves, even. And a bib. You'd be hauled away for..." he nods, dismissively, "...reckless juice dispersal."

"You _must_ take me there," she says, acidly, chewing. Her jaw moves and her lips move and the muscles in her neck flex. She grins. "What fun is that ?" _None_ , he wants to scream, and instead ferociously twists a jump circuit back into place. "Are you finished ?"

"Almost, Lady Patience."

"Good." She tugs at the fringe of her hair, ignoring his tone. "Let's go someplace exciting. What about that starfield place ? The planet with all the hot springs ? Jupiter Disney ?" She looks down. "Got any ideas ?"

He looks up at her through the floor; against the glow from the walls her skin shimmers in golden trails where the juice has run. The makeup around her eyes is smudging and he feels a cold shudder of something future claw up his vertebrae. She taps her foot, and he forgets. He wonders if he could get her to eat grapes in front of him next.

Probably.

"Tesco's," he says.

 

 **  
Distraction/Destination.   
**

There are sins and darkness, all the smaller betrayals that led to the largest one, the end, the fire of time; there is also Thursday, football, stolen cucumber sandwiches, the last slice of pie, the day she does her hair and smells like peroxide and gardenia shampoo for hours. He bathed in blood, metaphorically, and now he bathes in bubblebath that she left in the console room for him, as a hint, after they fell into a pigpen trying to rescue Ethelred the Unready.

"He wasn't ready for _us_ ," Rose had punned, badly, covered in filth and laughing her head off.

She does the laundry and talks on the phone to her mother while he tinkers with the ship he stole from his dead race. She holds the hand that pressed the button. There is something heavy in his heart when he watches her, like a stone but not like a stone, like a weight; like a pebble that sinks to the bottom of the river in relief and quiet, having been thrown there. She's alive as a fish, swimming above and around him.

"No. No, no, and no. It's a ridiculous thought." The Oncoming Storm shifts uncomfortably in his boots and folds his arms and builds the wall. Rose Tyler rests her hand on her hips and knocks it down. He scowls. "I'm not going to a _Girls Aloud_ concert."

He is.

Late, much later, they are walking nowhere and seeing nothing, wrists touching, his long fingers wrapped through hers like a net. A web. A fringe of reeds. Rose never questions the long silences, the times he looks away. But she doesn't take an ounce of shit and that's two-thirds of the battle to be around him. He knows. "Thank you," he says, more quietly than he intends to. Rose looks at him. Really looks. He's reflected in the glossy, liquid centers of her eyes.

"You're welcome," she says.

 

 **  
The oncoming.   
**

There is a man at the edge of the water. Rose walks up behind him; lets her eyes wander the sharp creases of his jacket at the shoulders, the sag at his pockets, the jut of his hips and his folded arms, his pride. His jeans are frayed at the backs of the ankles.

She slips her arm through his.

"I thought you said you'd be on the pier," she begins, and looks up with her tongue between her teeth. "Now, I know your position on wandering off-"

-and she stops. Because he's staring at her, eyes wide and dark, a confused and startled man trying to shake her arm off, while not really letting go at all. "Doctor ?" she says, as he goes backwards with one hand up, trying to grasp at a meaning that isn't hanging in the air. "Oh my God," she says, and lets go now, for real. "How is this-"

"I left you there," he says, steadily. "No. You left yourself there, Rose Tyler. Beans on toast."

"Yeah, I did," she says. She looks him over and there's no way she could've known, not really, because God knows the man is a stranger to variety. But it's there, in his eyes: hungry, angry, old eyes; eyes that don't dance or can't or won't, eyes that haven't slid across the ice at Women Wept and landed on her. "But you-"

"Don't say it," he says, clearly a little embarassed and more than a little angry at being so. He's flushing. "You've got to know the rules better than that."

He walks away.

Rose, behind him, smiles and shuts her eyes. She feels the spray of the water on the edge, the soft cool air turning blue with twilight, the salt on her skin and her tongue and curling like grit in her blood. She opens her eyes.

"Doctor," she calls out. He stops. He'll always stop; she understands that now. He turns halfway and his profile is long, lean, like a shadow. Maybe that changes, too. "You could mention it travels in time."

She knows he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> These four drabbles were written for the "Better With Two" Nine/Rose ficathon in March, 2009.


End file.
